When your UPS Batteries Fail And You Have A Sold Out Show In Two Hours

[Steve Guttag]

Carsten, in order to get the outlet control, you do need the SNMPWEB card (or the current version of it). With that card you can also set parameters for when it shuts down the unit (say when the batteries get down to 20% capacity) and what constitutes a problem, if you have SNMP capabilities.

If you have a large deployment...the SNMP cards also allow Enterprise grade monitoring (one can see their entire deployment, if desired).

As for long-life batteries. I strongly suggest not trying to find their duration and always change out batteries every 3-5 years. Sealed Lead-Acid batteries WILL swell and you may find that they don't want to come out at all if you wait until one of them fails.

[Carsten Kurz]

Usually, our Tripp-Lite Smart Online ( LED display) 1500 is connected to our playback server through USB. Sometimes I connected it to our administrative PC to check status, using the PowerAlert Local software. This is a client software that is meant to monitor the unit and also to perform automatic shutdown of a desktop or standard server. I understand there is also software to configure the unit. Does someone know which software is needed to configure the unit? Is there a different operation mode for PowerAlert to enable more options? The manual suggests it, but I didn't see how to switch modes.
I also understood that this Smart Online 1500 has three separate output circuits that may be switched off/on separately. Does anyone know how to accomplish this? The 'official' user manual does not offer much information beyond basic operation, that is, key functions and LED status.


We have this unit in operation since early 2013, and never had any issues with it. It is still on it's first battery set, but we don't have it running all day, only during show times.

Compared to the older APCs I know, these Tripp Lite units use a much lower charging current, and that seems to help the batteries to live much longer. The APCs I used really cooked their batteries. Don't know if the current APCs still do that. I understand that in some regions with very unstable power grids, a fast recharge may be a good idea. Where we are, power outages and instabilities are so rare, that the low charge current seems to be the better strategy. One would wish that the charge current would be configurable.

[Steve Guttag]

It's the one central thing in the booth and it has the ability to shut down the TMS server gracefully. Plus, that one card can keep time on the batteries for the entire booth.

[Scott Norwood]

What would be the reason for having the network card on the TMS UPS? Just a notification device in case of power failure? I would think that the TMS would be the system of least concern, since a cinema can still show movies without it.

[Steve Guttag]

I, personally, think that the $250 or whatever they go for on the network card is a rip. We'll typically have them on the TMS system and that is about it.

[Scott Norwood]

Agreed on the APC network card. They're useful and not terribly expensive. You can have it send email to you (or whomever) when something is wrong with the unit.

[Greg Routenburg]

I have the APC Smart units with the ethernet card installed in a couple of locations that are hard to get at. They've been quite reliable. I find it's great if you need to do a hard reset of any of the hardware connected to them. I can just log into the UPS and send a reboot command to a specific outlet group. It's been handy for things like remotely upgrading firmware that requires a powercycle to complete the job. I haven't implemented the SNMP features yet to monitor battery performance but it's in queue.

[Scott Norwood]

Coming from a server room/data center perspective, I'm honestly surprised that any of this is a problem. Any decent UPS will normally just fault to street power if the batteries fail. It will make loud beeping noises, but the power won't be interrupted (although under/over voltage correction functionality may be lost). The APC SMART-UPS models will definitely do this. I had one of these at home where the battery exploded (the UPS was about 17 years old--well beyond its expected life) and the connected equipment kept working fine. (I'm not super-thrilled with APC hardware in general, but it seems decent enough and their support is excellent.)

I like Sean's idea of separate power for redundant equipment. In a data center environment, we would normally have an A feed and a B feed, usually from separate street power grids, with separate UPSes, generators (often one diesel, one natural gas), and transfer switches. A PDU on one side of each rack carries the A power and one on the other side carries the B power. Most IT hardware has dual power supplies, so one power supply connects to each power feed.

48v telecom power is also a good idea, although I don't know much about it (I'm not a telecom guy) and wouldn't work for most cinema equipment.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I know what you mean. A friend of mine works in government public safety radio communications, and during a weeklong power outage in the middle of winter, they had to keep the fire/ambulance/police radios running, and because of the lack of generators available, they had to resort to using a set of pickup trucks left running at the tower, with jumper cables from the trucks running into the shack to keep the batteries charged.

Yep! One has to do what ever one can do to keep things running. At the transmitter site above it is atop a mountain with switch back roads going up.One time they had lost power because of a large substation failure down on ground level. So they used the generator for almost a month, and in order to get a fuel truck up there it takes a crane to lift the back end of the truck around each curve. So getting the truck up to 10,000 feet, unloading it's fuel, and then getting it back down around each curve is a two day job.

[Justin d'Entremont]

Most transmitter sites I know use 24V/48V DC setups. Just like most telco sites, that includes mobile cell sites, which all use (-)48V DC. They use this because the backup power setup is as simple as it gets: Just an array of regular 12V/24V batteries and a charging circuit. Most telco and transmission equipment also comes with 48V PSU options.

But yeah, 120/230V AC equipment is creeping in everywhere nowadays...

I know what you mean. A friend of mine works in government public safety radio communications, and during a weeklong power outage in the middle of winter, they had to keep the fire/ambulance/police radios running, and because of the lack of generators available, they had to resort to using a set of pickup trucks left running at the tower, with jumper cables from the trucks running into the shack to keep the batteries charged.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Most regenerative UPS's do run on 48 volts including the ones I put in. But in any large broadcast site here you are going to find everything under the sun. From 750 VA to room sized systems. The one in the picture is 2.5 mW capacity and there is a second room about 20 x 30 feet filled with shelves of lead acid batteries. Max run time for 8 DTV transmitters is 30 minutes. Power switches to the UPS and then.they start and warm up the generator for 10 min before switching to it. This is the largest UPS I have encountered. Every theater should have a generator like that...

Yeah, not an uncommon sight. In a previous life, I used to do some contracting work for datacenters. Those kind of setups were pretty common back then. Nowadays, some of those datacenters have grown to proportions where they sometimes even build their own on-site power plants...

But as you can see, they keep their battery banks in separate rooms. Back in the days we ran our own datacenter site, where we had the batteries inside the "UPS room" at first. The temperature was always quite high, especially in the summer. Batteries never lasted. Once we moved them into a separate building with some basic climate control, I felt a lot safer and those batteries essentially lasted forever.

If I had to chose between putting the batteries or a diesel generator inside the building, I'd actually choose for the diesel generator. Although, those things also come with the necessary precautions. I remember a test-run where the vent to the outside failed to open. The thing sucked the oxygen out of the room and created a vacuum and as a result, we couldn't open the doors to the generator room, until it died of oxygen shortage shortly after. As a result we built a bunch of always-open vents into the room and reversed the way the doors opened. The latter part required a special permit from the local fire brigade, as they wanted doors that opened to the outside. But, imagine being in that room while the machine starts and the vent refuses to open...

[Leo Enticknap]

Leo, at your convenience could you post the PN's for the router and the adapter for it? I need to order another three from you guys soon.

Will do, the next time I'm in the shop and can have a look at one (likely Thursday or Friday).

EDIT - found it on a service report. The NEC part number is BR-CP1400N, and MiT's part number is 00308-01.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Mark, you are showing the "SU" series UPS (Smart Online...not the same as the SMART)...those have the optional "LCD" display to them...but the original SMART UPS (same part number too) now all have the digital numeric display that is almost as tall as the unit...those are duds. The LCD option for the SU series is just a couple line display.

Sure looks the same... And same specs. Also a regenerative ups...

[Steve Guttag]

Mark, you are showing the "SU" series UPS (Smart Online...not the same as the SMART)...those have the optional "LCD" display to them...but the original SMART UPS (same part number too) now all have the digital numeric display that is almost as tall as the unit...those are duds. The LCD option for the SU series is just a couple line display.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I do about three NEC router board swapouts a year. I can't remember doing any in a projector younger than five years, but that appears to be when they start to become unreliable. We also sell around a couple of dozen of them a year for installation by others. They are a frequently enough requested part that we keep them in stock. As with the cat745s, Series 2 NECs have now been in service for long enough that we are now starting to see age-related part failures, I guess.

Leo, at your convenience could you post the PN's for the router and the adapter for it? I need to order another three from you guys soon.

Thanks!